16-31 March 2017 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Here’s the second part of the March timeline (first part here), covering the main cyber attacks occurred between 16 and 31 March 2017.

Let’s start from the mega breaches: unfortunately, but we should be used to it, the damage report of this fortnight has confirmed the trend we have been experiencing in the last months. The list includes: some cryptocurrency forums (approximately 12 million accounts compromised), the Illinois Department of Employment Security (1.4 million records compromised), and online forum called Dueling Network (6.5 million email addresses and hashed passwords).

Despite the impact is considerably smaller, the list of the victims also includes McDonald’s Canada, whose career website has been hacked, compromising the personal data of around 95,000 restaurant job applicants.

The list of Cyber Espionage includes: El Machete, a massive cyber espionage campaign targeting high-profile international government organizations across the globe, a campaign targeting GitHub users, and a new attack against the German Parliament.

If you want to have an idea of how fragile our electronic identity is inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics that are regularly published, and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.

Additionally, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts), and if useful, you can access the timeline in Google Sheet format.